Chapter 1 Lesson 1

KEY TAKEAWAYS
 Rules are meant to set order in society.
 Rules are intended for human persons. They are not meant to limit a person's freedom
which is the ability to choose and do what is good. Rather rules are meant to help
persons choose and do what is good.
 Those who do what is good don't even feel the presence of a rule that prevents them
from doing what is not good. It is those who intend to do the opposite of what is good
that feel the suffocating and limiting presence of a rule.
 When society is ideal, i.e., when all persons are good and do only what is ideal then
there will be no more need for rules and laws according to Lao Tzu.

Chapter 1 lesson 2
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 Non-moral standards originate from social rules, demands of etiquette and good
manners. They are guides of action which should be followed as expected by society.
 Moral standards are based on the natural law, the consequence of one's actions and
sense of duty.
 Moral standards are based on natural law, the law of God revealed through human
reason or the " law of God written in the hearts of men."
 Moral standards are based on consequences standards. That which leads to a good
consequence or result like the greatest good of the greatest number is what is moral.
 Moral standards are based also on non-consequence standards or sense of duty that
you wish would be followed by all. Respect for humanity, treatment of the other as a
human person, an act that is moral, springs from a sense of duty, a sense of duty that
you wish is wished by all and applies to all human persons. For theists, the origin of
moral standards is God who "wrote his law in the heart of every person", the natural
law.
 For non-theists, the origin of moral standards is the moral frameworks formulated by
philosophers like Confucius, Immanuel Kant, Stuart Mill, et al. The evolutionist
claims that the sense of moral standards must have evolved with man not something
that was implanted in every human person instantly at the moment of creation.
Creation as a process may have taken place not only in 6 days as the creationist claims
but in billions of years as the evolutionist asserts.
 For the theists, belief in God strengthens them to be moral.

Chapter 1 Lesson 3
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 A moral dilemma is a "decision making problem between two possible moral
imperatives, neither of which is unambiguously acceptable or preferable.
 A moral dilemma is a situation where a person has the moral obligation to choose
between two options both based on moral standards, but he /she cannot choose both,
and choosing one means violating the other.
 In a moral dilemma, one is caught between two options. It is a "damn- if-you-do and
damn-if-you-don't situation. One is in a deadlock.
 False dilemmas are situations where the decision-maker has a moral duty to do one
thing but is tempted or under pressure to do something else. A false dilemma is a
choice between a right and a wrong unlike a moral dilemma where both choices are
wrong.
Chapter 1 Lesson 4
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 Moral dilemmas come in three levels - individual, organizational, or structural.
 Individual dilemmas concern dilemmas that individual person’s face.
 Organizational dilemmas refer to dilemmas between organizational benefits versus
individual members' welfare.
 Structural dilemmas concern dilemmas faced by groups or individuals because of
structural relationships.
 A world organization like the United Nations is usually faced with this dilemma:
sovereignty of nations versus world order.
 If confronted with a moral dilemma, choose the greater good and lesser evil or..." do
only what you can where you are (Fletcher) or "love and do what you will" (St.
Augustine) The extent of one's obligation and responsibility is the extent of one's
ability and the measure of the "extent" is one's capacity for love.

Chapter 1 Lesson 5
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 Choice or freedom is a prerequisite of ethics or morality.
 Every human person has freedom or choice and so is expected to be ethical or moral.
 Lower forms of animals have no choice. They are governed by instincts and so ethics
or morality does not apply to them.
 To be truly ethical or moral, we must internalize or possess not just adhere to moral
standards. "I did it My Way" because I am convinced, must do it "My Way" and not
because others tell me so.

CHAPTER 1 Lesson 6
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 Culture is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors. It is
people's way of life.
 Culture consists of non-material and material culture. Non-material culture includes
language, values, rules, knowledge, and meanings shared by members of society.
Material culture refers to the physical objects that a society produces such as tools and
works of art.
 Culture is learned not inherited. It is acquired through enculturation, inculturation and
acculturation.
 Enculturation is the process of learning the components of life - material as well as
non-material - in one's culture.
 Inculturation is making the Gospel take roots in a culture and introducing that
transformed culture to Christianity.
 Acculturation is the process by which people learn and adapt a new culture.
 Culture influences the human person, who is the moral agent.
 Culture affects human behavior. Not all cultural practices are morally acceptable.
Examples are the culture of vengeance and low regard for the African women in
comparison to the African men.

Chapter 1 Lesson 7
KEY TAKEAWAYS
  Cultural relativism is "the idea that a person's beliefs, values and practices should be
understood based on that person's own culture, rather than be judged against the
criteria of another."
 Morality is relative to the norms of one's culture. That is, whether an action is right or
wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same
action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another.
 The danger of cultural relativism is the idea of relativism itself. Whether an action is
right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced.
What is good depends on what society's culture considers as good. What is bad
likewise depends on what society's culture considers as bad.
 Absolute relativism is self-contradictory and impossible. Absolute relativism states
"there are no absolute truths: which is an absolute truth itself, so absolute relativism
contradicts itself.
 There is a difference between cultural perspective and cultural relativism. To have a
cultural perspective is to understand people's beliefs, values, and practices in the
context of their culture. Having a perspective of one's culture, is needed to understand
people. But it does not follow that morality must be based on said culture.

Chapter 1 Lesson 8
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 The Filipino has several strengths. His/her strengths when they become extreme,
however, also become his/her weaknesses.
 His/her strengths help him/her become ethical and moral, but his/her weaknesses
obstruct his/her moral and ethical growth.
 Culture has a significant impact on morality.
 The Filipino group-centeredness and "kami"- mentality make it difficult for the
Filipino to stand up against the group when that is the moral thing to do.
 There is much need for home, school, and society to help every Filipino grow into the
strong moral person everyone is called to become.
 For the Filipino to become the moral and ethical person, he/she should capitalize on
his/her strengths and eliminate his/her weaknesses.

Chapter 1 Lesson 9
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 Universal values are for human survival.
 Universal values are the ultimate bases for living together and how to live together.
Without respect for human life by all then people will just kill each other. If honesty
or truth telling is not valued by will be endless lack of trust among people.
 Despite cultural relativism, there are values that are universal for human survival.

Chapter 2 Lesson 1
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 A moral agent is one who performs an act in accordance with moral standards.
 A moral agent should have the capacity to rise above his/her feelings and passions and
acts in accordance with the moral law.
  A moral agent has the capacity to conform to moral standards, to act for the sake of
moral considerations, that is, for the sake of moral law.
 An insane person, who does not have the capacity to think and choose, cannot be a
moral agent. A dog is, therefore, not a moral agent because it doesn't have the
capacity to conform to moral standards. It cannot knowingly, freely, and voluntarily
act. It does not have a mind and freewill. Like the dog, a robot cannot be a moral
agent.
 The moral agent is purpose-driven or end-driven. That end is sought for its own sake,
an end no longer sought for the sake of another end, the highest good which is
happiness.
 From the Christian point of view, a human person's destiny in the world is not only to
achieve cultural and moral perfection, but to attain the eternal happiness of the soul
after death of the body. As a moral agent his duty is to know, to love, and to serve
God, his ultimate end.
 Fundamental option is a human person's basic choice or inner orientation either for a
good life (directed towards others and God) or for a bad life (directed towards
himself/ herself and cut off from others and God.
 Man as a moral agent adopts the "fundamental option," a free choice to say "yes" to
God's invitation to follow His way.
 There is no pre-fixed plan for the human person as a moral agent.
 For the existentialist, like Jean Paul Sartre, the human person, the moral agent,
becomes what he/she makes of himself/herself by choice. He/she is nothing, no
"essence" until he/she starts his/her "existence" by making choices. To the process
philosophers like Teilhard de Chardin and Alfred North Whitehead, whatever a
human person, the moral agent, is or will be is a result of a creative process. The
moral agent must create his/her end, purpose, or directions. He/she must invent
his/her destiny. Since there is no goal or end designed for him/her, he/she would
completely be the author of what he/she turns out to be. He/she will be totally
responsible for what he/she will be.
 Other groups, like Martin Heidegger, Gabriel Marcel and Martin Buber see the moral
agent as a being-with-others, who is inseparably related to his/her fellow man.
Together with other moral agents, the human person goes through life, designing
his/her end guided by messages unveiled in a life of dialogue with others and with the
world.
 For Brabander, the moral agent directs his/her life to improve, refine, develops this
world to bring out the world to come.
 R. Franceur likewise claims that the moral agent should direct his/her life to the
spritualization of this material world.

Chapter 2 Lesson 2
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 Defining moment refers to a significant life-changing event or moment of conversion
in a person's life.
 A person who has moral character does moral actions more readily and more
willingly than one who does not. Therefore, it is good to develop moral character.
 It is, therefore, best for all persons to develop moral character. Moral character is
formed by repeatedly doing moral acts.

Chapter 2 Lesson 3
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 According to William Kay, human persons go through three stages of moral
development: 1) the amoral stage-egocentric, hedonist, and prudential considerations;
2) the pre-moral stage - authoritarian, ego-idealist, social and reciprocal
considerations, and 3) the moral stage. personal, autonomous, altruistic, rational,
independent, and responsible considerations.
 According to Kohlberg human persons go through three levels of moral development:
1) preconventional, 2) conventional, and 3) postconventional. Each level has two
distinct stages and so Kohlberg has six stages of moral development.
 During the preconventional level, a child's sense of morality is externally controlled.
Children accept and believe the rules of authority figures, such as parents and
teachers, and they judge an action based on its consequences.
 During the conventional level, an individual's sense of morality is tied to personal and
societal relationships. Children continue to accept the rules of authority figures, but
this is now because they believe that this is necessary to ensure positive relationships
and societal order.
 During the postconventional level, a person's sense of morality is defined in terms of
more abstract principles and universal values which are now internalized • For
William Kay and Kohlberg, every person is meant to grow into moral maturity. Moral
maturity is evident in a person who acts based on his conviction rooted on universal
ethical principles not because his act will bring him/her pleasure or pain, or that
his/her act is in accordance with the laws or expectations of his/her group or society.
 Genuine moral development, which is attaining the post-conventional stage, the
highest stage in Kohlberg's, is essentially development of conscience.
 Conscience formation begins with the deep-seated decision to seek moral truth. It
must stand on the firm foundation of integrity, sincerity, and forthrightness and must
be sustained by the habit of consistently educating oneself by exposure to objective
moral norms, and the rationale behind those norms.
 For conscience to be formed, it needs a guide, for Christians, the Church's moral
teaching and persons whose moral judgments are sound and in accordance with the
Church's moral tradition. Conscience formation requires a habit of ongoing self-
formation (moral information gathering) through study, reading and other types of
inquiry.
 Conscience-based moral decision means the widening of human consciousness - from
family consciousness to clan consciousness, community consciousness, town
consciousness, provincial, regional, national, and international or global
consciousness.
 As one's consciousness widens, the standards of one's decision making widens, one's
moral conscience widens, one matures.
 Moral development is internalization of moral norms. One acts morally based on
his/her convictions not because the law says so or a person in authority orders so.
Chapter 3 Lesson 1
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 A human act is an action that is carried out voluntarily, whereas an act of man is an
involuntary action.
 A human act is an act on which an individual can make a conscious decision whether
to carry out that act. An act of man is the natural act of vegetative and sense faculties
such as digestion, the beating of the heart, growing, bodily reactions and visual or
auditory perceptions.
  For an individual human act to be moral, its object must be free from all defects; it
must be good, or at least indifferent. The end or purpose intended by the agent for that
act must likewise be good.
 Circumstances surrounding the human act such as time, place, person, and conditions
surrounding the moral act may either increase or diminish the moral goodness or evil
of a human act.
 A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the
circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good.

Chapter 3 Lesson 2
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 There are three bases for moral accountability, namely: knowledge, freedom, and
voluntariness.
 These are the necessary conditions for the accountability of actions: 1) a human act
must be done knowingly; 2) it must be done freely and 3) it must be done voluntarily.
 Modifiers of human acts either increase or decrease accountability. These are
analogous to exempting, mitigating, aggravating, and justifying circumstances in
criminal law.
 "These modifiers of human act affect the mental or emotional state of a person to the
extent that the voluntariness involved in an act is either increased or decreased."
 The modifiers of human act are: 1) ignorance, 2) passion, 3) fear and 4) violence.
 Ignorance can be vincible, invincible, affected, and supine or gross. Invincible
ignorance cannot be overcome by due amount of diligence while vincible ignorance
can be overcome. Invincible ignorance, one that is beyond one's ability to overcome,
is entirely involuntary, and hence removes moral responsibility; vincible ignorance
does not free us from responsibility.
 Gross or supine ignorance exists when scarcely an effort has been made to remove it
while affected ignorance exists when a person deliberately avoids enlightenment to
sin more freely.
 Antecedent passion decreases moral accountability while consequent passion does not
decrease voluntariness so increases moral accountability.
 Acts done with fear is voluntary, but acts done because of intense or uncontrollable
fear or panic are involuntary.
 Actions performed by person subjected to violence or irresistible force are involuntary
and, therefore, the person is not accountable.

Chapter 3 Lesson 3
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 Feelings can be obstacles to making right decisions, but they can also help in making
the right decisions.
 Feelings can help persons in making the right decisions if they are reasonably
managed.
 Acting on one's convictions imply involvement of both reason and feeling.
 One teaches effectively when he/she touches the heart. This is the main feature of
value education that works.
 To be an ethical person, one must manage his/her feelings well.

Chapter 3 Lesson 4
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 The minimum requirements of morality are reason and impartiality.
 Moral decisions should be arrived at by the use of reason.
 The use of reason is exemplified in the 7-step model of Scott Rae and the value
clarification process.
 Fallacious reasoning such as ad hominem, ad verecundiam and ad miserecordiam has
no place in moral decisions.

Chapter 3 Lesson 5
KEY TAKEAWAYS
 The moral person is endowed with an intellect and will.
 Reason conducts the study, research, fact-finding, investigation, by using logic, to
arrive at a correct proposition.
 The will is the faculty of the mind that is associated with decision making. It's the one
that says yes or no.
 The "will" is what "disposes" what "the intellect proposes." Strengthening of the will
calls for courage which is self-affirmation in- spite-of non-being (Paul Tillich). Purity
of heart is to will one thing. (S. Kierkegaard).
 The stuff of free will is a multidimensional matter (Hornedo) - physical, economic,
political, etc. It is autonomous energy.